'Penny Dreadful: City of Angels' star Adam Rodriguez dishes why Raul is at loggerheads with his brother Tiago
'Penny Dreadful: City of Angels' takes its audience back to Los Angeles in the late 1930s. It was a different time back then, and an especially difficult one for the Hispanic community.
Adam Rodriguez, in an exclusive interview with MEA World Wide (MEAWW), talks about his character, union leader Raul Vega, and his relationship with his brother, as well as what his time on the show was like.
What can you tell us about your character and his role in the show?
Well, my character is named Raul Vega and he's the oldest brother of the Vega family, who really are the heart of the show. My middle brother is played by Daniel Zovatto and his character is Tiago. He's really the central character to the entire story and he's the first chicano LAPD detective.
He is breaking new ground as a detective in a department that, as you can imagine, is all white, and has never had anybody of color participate there. So he's going through his struggles. The other struggle that's going on is within his family because my character is a union leader and community organizer.
Essentially the cops are the enemy for me. They represent "The Man" and everything that's trying to be put upon the people that I want to stand up for, which is the working class. That's a big part of the struggle that's going on. So these two brothers are at odds and it comes to head in the very first episode.
Can you tell us a little bit more about how Raul and Tiago are forced to be at odds with each other?
I think that those are always the most interesting conflicts — the ones where two people that love each other as much as two brothers naturally would. And yet when there's conflict it's like that conflict... really escalates to that height when it's two people who didn't love each other that much in the first place.
Family conflicts are always the most intense for that reason, because your family naturally are the people that you care about the most, and when you're at odds with them that intensity is always to the extreme.
So here are these two brothers that absolutely loved each other, and care for each other and want the best for each other, yet they both have different beliefs in how they can help cure the system that they think needs fixing.
There is this battle that goes on, and there's this disappointment that the other doesn't see the side that one sees, and I think that disappointment breeds anger, almost to the point of hatred brews.
That's always a hard challenge to overcome. Sometimes blood has to be shed to get to that point, and other times distance needs to be created. In this case, I think we're gonna see a little bit of both.
What can you tell us about what your experience on the show has been like? Have there been any particularly memorable moments?
I got to say this has been one of my absolute best working experiences. I've had an absolutely wonderful time with the cast and crew. I fell in love with this material from the first time that I read it and sat down with John Logan and Michael Aguilar to discuss it and the character.
It's the most excited I've ever been about playing any character in my career. I feel the most attached to Raul that I've felt to any character I've ever played. I feel like he's got the most important thing to say that I've ever gotten to say with any character that I've had the chance to play.
All the words are there, and all the meaning is behind them — both in the performance and in the written word itself. I've loved every second of being a part of telling the story further than that the costume than the set design.
Every aspect of the production has been absolutely extraordinary. the cinematography, all of it- it's really been a dream come true working on this project. I've had days on set where everything is so well done — every last detail of everything.
Head to toe in the costume, the hair, the makeup, the sets, the cars, the props, everything — to the point where you really are transported as an actor into this other period and time and it's such an amazing thing to help further what we are capable of doing as actors, creating a reality to this world.
I really think the audiences are going to just completely be transported to this time period.
Stay tuned for part 2 of the interview, where Adam Rodriguez talks about the challenge of being a union leader in 1930s LA.
The next episode of 'Penny Dreadful: City of Angels' releases on May 3 on Showtime.
